Report Accuses Israeli Exporters of Passing Settlement Goods Off as Made in Israel

A human rights group says Israeli exporters routinely hide the origins of produce grown in the occupied territories to avoid higher duties on shipments to Europe. Global Echo said it reviewed more than 30,000 export documents covering thousands of Israeli shipments to Britain and the European Union over eight years.

According to the group, one in six shipments it examined contained agricultural goods from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Syrian Golan Heights, and at least 42% of those were labeled as made in Israel. Emily Schaefer Omar-Man, Global Echo’s executive director, told the Guardian, “This is not an anomaly and it is not accidental. It is a system that Britain and the EU have agreed to.”

The organization is demanding that the British government review its import controls on Israeli goods and said it will take legal action if HMRC does not address its verification concerns. Global Echo said Europe is Israel’s biggest market and the EU is its leading trading partner, accounting for nearly 30% of exports. It also pointed to the 1995 free trade agreement, which lowered tariffs on Israeli imports, but said settlement products do not qualify because, in its view, Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land is illegal under international law.

Global Echo said its 400-page report found settlement goods marked as Israeli were a “significant and recurring element” in agricultural trade from Israel to Europe in recent years. The investigation combined export records, publicly available data, and interviews with Palestinians, senior Israeli industry figures, and whistleblowers. It says exporters used loopholes or fraud to ship products as “grown in Israel” in three ways, by giving false addresses inside Israel’s recognized borders, by mixing settlement produce with official Israeli products at cold storage or packing facilities, or by labeling the blend as Israeli-grown.